A customer had left me a pair of hookless carbon rim wheels for work.
The image above is the rear wheel.
They'd been left with me last December wanting the wheels rebuilt,
but then requested I just return them without rebuilding,
so I'm sending them back to the customer.
The delayed timeline is my fault,
so I offered to cover the shipping costs myself,
but rather than making a fuss about that, I thought I'd at least do some truing as a service.
The front wheel had no center offset and only needed minimal truing,
but the rear wheel had significant runout toward the non-freewheel side,
and looking closer, I found that two spokes on the freewheel side
in the final crossings were continuously deformed.
↑This one next to the valve hole
↑and this one counterclockwise from it when viewed from the right
Wheel spokes tend to focus on the background wall,
so it's tricky to photograph them well.
I place my hand behind the spokes,
focus on my palm, then remove my hand
and it comes out like this.
Up to this point I hadn't touched the nipples at all, but
↑when I release the tension on the two bent spokes
it looks like this.
The spokes were CX Sprint, so I'll repair them.
By adjusting just the nipples at the two spoke replacement points,
the lateral runout almost completely disappeared.
This means that when those spokes broke,
no emergency countermeasures—like tightening the nipples around the broken/bent spokes—had been applied.
The center was spot-on at that point
(not shown in the images above),
but there was noticeable radial runout.
If this radial runout appeared near the spoke replacement phases or opposite them,
it might have come from the spoke replacement itself,
but it appears in phases unrelated to that.
So this radial runout was there from the start,
and the two spoke replacements only
"restored the wheel to the state just before the spokes deformed."
Both wheels have the same characteristic nipple color pattern,
so it's unlikely they were built by different people,
but the compromise point where the rear wheel was deemed "finished"
is considerably short of what I'd accept.
If a wheel with radial runout had been used over time
and had an aluminum rim
(↓wait, nowadays I should note this too)
and had rim brakes,
the wear marks in the brake zone would be evidence, but
since this is a carbon rim I couldn't confirm it
(there is brake shoe residue,
but it's not applied in a way that would serve as evidence of radial runout).
A state of no lateral runout, perfect center,
with only radial runout
is like being handed someone else's partially-built wheel
and told "take it to your standard of finish."
↑I did this work entirely on my own,
and I'm doing spoke replacement and labor as a service,
so it's off-base to complain—just noting that for the record.
When I corrected the radial runout, minor lateral runout appeared,
but without center offset. From there I refined the lateral runout
until the wheel reached a state I could call "properly built,"
which is shown in the image above.
↑The replaced spokes
The spoke at the final crossing next to the valve hole is on the right of the image,
and its counterclockwise neighbor at the final crossing is on the left.
It appears something was caught during wheel rotation—
for example, a cable lock that was left on while riding off would cause deformation like this,
but it wouldn't affect two consecutive final crossings.
Also, in terms of rotation direction, the second impact
shows significantly more damage.
The image above is the rear wheel.
They'd been left with me last December wanting the wheels rebuilt,
but then requested I just return them without rebuilding,
so I'm sending them back to the customer.
The delayed timeline is my fault,
so I offered to cover the shipping costs myself,
but rather than making a fuss about that, I thought I'd at least do some truing as a service.
The front wheel had no center offset and only needed minimal truing,
but the rear wheel had significant runout toward the non-freewheel side,
and looking closer, I found that two spokes on the freewheel side
in the final crossings were continuously deformed.
↑This one next to the valve hole
↑and this one counterclockwise from it when viewed from the right
Wheel spokes tend to focus on the background wall,
so it's tricky to photograph them well.
I place my hand behind the spokes,
focus on my palm, then remove my hand
and it comes out like this.
Up to this point I hadn't touched the nipples at all, but
↑when I release the tension on the two bent spokes
it looks like this.
The spokes were CX Sprint, so I'll repair them.
By adjusting just the nipples at the two spoke replacement points,
the lateral runout almost completely disappeared.
This means that when those spokes broke,
no emergency countermeasures—like tightening the nipples around the broken/bent spokes—had been applied.
The center was spot-on at that point
(not shown in the images above),
but there was noticeable radial runout.
If this radial runout appeared near the spoke replacement phases or opposite them,
it might have come from the spoke replacement itself,
but it appears in phases unrelated to that.
So this radial runout was there from the start,
and the two spoke replacements only
"restored the wheel to the state just before the spokes deformed."
Both wheels have the same characteristic nipple color pattern,
so it's unlikely they were built by different people,
but the compromise point where the rear wheel was deemed "finished"
is considerably short of what I'd accept.
If a wheel with radial runout had been used over time
and had an aluminum rim
(↓wait, nowadays I should note this too)
and had rim brakes,
the wear marks in the brake zone would be evidence, but
since this is a carbon rim I couldn't confirm it
(there is brake shoe residue,
but it's not applied in a way that would serve as evidence of radial runout).
A state of no lateral runout, perfect center,
with only radial runout
is like being handed someone else's partially-built wheel
and told "take it to your standard of finish."
↑I did this work entirely on my own,
and I'm doing spoke replacement and labor as a service,
so it's off-base to complain—just noting that for the record.
When I corrected the radial runout, minor lateral runout appeared,
but without center offset. From there I refined the lateral runout
until the wheel reached a state I could call "properly built,"
which is shown in the image above.
↑The replaced spokes
The spoke at the final crossing next to the valve hole is on the right of the image,
and its counterclockwise neighbor at the final crossing is on the left.
It appears something was caught during wheel rotation—
for example, a cable lock that was left on while riding off would cause deformation like this,
but it wouldn't affect two consecutive final crossings.
Also, in terms of rotation direction, the second impact
shows significantly more damage.